Archive for February, 2008

Apologies for the formatting! Tried to edit to put paragraph spaces in but it won’t let me!

Had a grand time up in Kinlochleven last weekend staying at Bob & Chris’s excellent B&B. After much despondency after the thaw from the previous weekend’s snow Saturday morning turned out to be cloudy but dry. We arrived as promised at the car park at 9.15 but there was no sign of our fellow Air Na Creagan friends who were staying at Blackwater Hostel! A quick phone and it became clear that it would be at least half an hour before they would be ready so Elaina and I decided to go on towards the eastern Mamores.

A good steady plod through the woods saw us hit the landrover track within an hour. We headed east towards Loch Eilde Mor and along it’s northern shore passing a boathouse and several streams in full spate. We did see a path heading up the hill but didn’t fancy the look of the waterfalls it seemed to be heading for so carried on until we were due south of Sgurr Eilde Mor. And so we hit the open hill, easy going grass at first but then it steepened until at one point we were on a 75 degree slope which unfortunately coincided with the wind getting up a bit! However we managed to grab enough clumps of heather to get ourselves up onto the rockier ground above.

Surprisingly we then started to meet other people, a couple coming down and others who had traversed round from the western slopes. At one point we found some rocks to shelter behind and decided, sensibly as it turned out, to have a spot of lunch. Eventually we hit the summit of Sgurr Eilde Mor but didn’t hang around as the wind was just about blowing us over!

The original plan had been to do do Binnein Beag as well but time was running out so we headed down the southwest scree towards Coire an Lochain. Some interesting snow filled gullies and earth moving moments saw us eventually level out at the lochan. Then the fun really began as we realised that the outflow stream wasn’t the easiest to cross.

Fortunately a couple of other walkers joined us at that point and between us we all managed to get across, albeit having to recover an ice axe from the water!

And so we went on to the penultimate obstacle of the day, the Allt Coire nan Laogh, which we took one look at and then decided to follow the feint path down it’s eastern bank. Slippy though it was it was preferable to the risk of a dunking! And so we hit the landrover track just as the rain started. We then donned headtorches to negotiate the final obstacle, the woods that led back to the village.

An excellent night in the MacDonald Hotel followed with good food, drink and company as usual!

And the Tiger’s managed to recover from 2-0 down at half time to draw 2-2 at home to Blackpool. Play-off place still in our sights…